ONE FOR THE CHRISTMAS OFFICE PARTY:::INDECENCE by GIVENCHY

 

 

 

 

That time of year is now very close on the horizon, when we ‘gear up’ for the colussus that is Christmas, fill up our shopping carts with truckloads of nonsense, and begin to tie things up at work before the winter break. Start organizing the requisite office Christmas party, where legless backsides are photocopied during clumsy embraces, shiny red noses are ‘hilariously’ donned by the office clowns, and repressed desires are sometimes, later, regretfully expressed.

 

 

 

Japan also has its end of year release: the annual and unavoidable bonding ritual of the ‘bonenkai’ : usually quite spirited and raucous affairs, where sake and beer are consumed in copious quantities as company employees gather in large numbers in restaurants and izakaya, and where it is acceptable to get quite drunk and perhaps pry a little bit more than you ought to into the personal life of that person you were always a bit curious about; when your boss has the right to make fun of you, sometimes quite mortifyingly so; hog the mike at karaoke; and everyone, red-faced and stumbling for the last train, is kind of glad when it is all over ( and any long denied secret assignations will be discreetly made, later, for a ‘love hotel’ )….

 

 

 

 

Traditionally, though, the British Christmas office party is more out in the open ; over the top; even scandalous : a bit of a free for all,  a disengorgement of pent up frustrations when people kind of know they have free license to be naughty, and wild; and then can later just blame it all on the booze, after they have snogged their secret crush by the water fountain, or have embarrassedly moved in a bit closer to that person they have long had an eye on stuck furtively, and longingly: frustrated and bored, for years, behind the keyboard of their computer.

 

 

 

 

 

Organza Indecence, a quite daring fragrance from 1999 by Givenchy that was inexplicably discontinued five years later ( to the horror of its devotees – this scent now has a large cult following and extortionate prices on eBay) strikes me as the perfect perfume for this familiar scenario : the ideal, invisible weapon for a premeditated, inebriated stumbling against that suit you have spent the entire year yearning for; fumbling; almost spilling your drink as you graze his lapels, snug – ‘unintentionally’  – in your heated,  ferally evocative perfume.

 

 

 

 

 

Mature. Rational. A warm and pulsing woody cinnamon amber with a heart of naked vanilla, Indecence is pretty much as sultry as they come, with the syrupy, heavy breathing cedar of the parfum extrait version of Shiseido’s  Feminite coupled with the dense vanilla spice of L’Elephant by Kenzo: not as elegant nor as mysterious as the former (not by a long mile); nor as sweet nor as radical as the latter, but still a rich, stealthy, and very adult-rated perfume that will make your Secret Santa clandestine desires known quite explicitly, as you move in closer-  to ‘Last Christmas’ – without your ever whispering a word.